


Firebird

by FleetSparrow



Series: Story a Day in May 2019 [11]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Phoenixes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 04:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18793105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetSparrow/pseuds/FleetSparrow
Summary: While investigating a fire in a burned out house, our man finds the cause, and it's nothing like he would have expected.





	Firebird

**Author's Note:**

> Day 11 of SADIM. Prompt: Description.
> 
> I did my best. I always skim over descriptions in books, so I don't know how well I did describing things here, but oh well.

The house was silent, except for the occasional groan of lumber shifting, rotting. The acrid stench of smoke still filled the air, even all these hours later. It wasn’t billowing from the house anymore, but it was in everything, every beam, every fiber of carpet still left, every stick of furniture.

He stepped gingerly into the burned out house, careful of where he put his weight. The floor was wood beneath the carpet, and there was a basement underneath. One wrong step could send him plummeting a storey. Embers still glowed dimly in the fallen timbers. He adjusted his mask, but it couldn’t hide all of the smell. Cautiously, he made his way to the dark basement steps.

The stairs had burned away, but a metal ladder had been placed to allow entry. Something had caused the fire here, something down there in the blackness. Electrical failure, or the gas explosion of a water heater. These were the likely causes.

Once in the basement, he shone his flashlight around. The walls were black with soot. Charred remains of appliances, and an old piano, were all that remained. The fire had burned hottest here. He made his way through the debris, his flashlight beam landing on a fallen door. No, not fallen. It lay smashed in two against the far wall as though some great force had flung it there.

He turned. There was a small closet-like space that wasn’t marked on his map. The inside of the closet was empty except for a pile of ash. His gloved hand sifted through the ash until he hit upon something solid. Carefully brushing it away, he found a small, blood orange egg.

He pulled off his glove and touched it. The egg was hot, almost scalding to the touch. He blew on his fingers. Putting his glove back on, he picked up the egg. It was still hot, but tolerable through thick work gloves. As strange as it seemed to be, this was the source of the fire. Shining his beam around the closet, he could see where the flames had licked at the walls and door before popping it from its hinges and blasting it across the room.

Cradling the egg in his palm, he made his way back to the ladder, climbing it one-handed in the dark. Whatever had made this egg had made the fire. Whatever that thing was, it was well above his pay grade.

“Boss,” he called as he made his way back through the house. “You gotta see this.”

The chief investigator came over, along with the fire chief.

“What have you got there?” asked the investigator.

He held out his hand to show the egg. “What is it, boss?”

The two chiefs looked at each other.

“That’s Special Ops stuff.”

The fire chief swore under his breath. “You wanna make the call?”

The investigator nodded. “Yeah, I’ll do it. You—hold onto that thing, and for God’s sake, don’t break it.”

“Yes, sir.” The egg was cooling in the open air, so he put his other hand over it. He’d never felt an egg this hot before, and he figured he probably never would again.


End file.
